Katie Beers (32 page)

“He wanted Aunt Linda to think that someone kidnapped me.”
There was a brief exchange about the size of the tape recorder, then an unexpected sound. Humming. Katie was humming.

“Very, very good,”
said the detective
. “Now did you keep all of this in your memory or did you have something to write on?

“I kept it in my memory.” “You did, huh?”
“This was our special victim’s detective, Deborah Tyrell,” Dominick paused the tape.

“Boy, you are smart, Katie; I have to tell you, you are a very smart little girl. Now when you made that tape, you were already down in the room. He already had brought you down to the room. And when you saw this room, what did you think?”

“I was scared plus on the sheets he had down there, they were white like this paper and then down at the end there were little spots of blood! Okay, that’s what scared me the most!”

“Yeah… I can imagine,”
Detective Tyrell exhaled in the face of the unshaken little girl.

I had heard of the spots of blood, but from police, not from Katie. When I asked her about this, she drew a blank. She now has no memory of being terrified by blood stains on the sheets in the box.

“He made a hole in the wall so I could get air. I could get my hand out that way, but the boards were heavy. I was bashing the chains against the ceiling.”

“Chains? Where were chains? What did he do with the chains?” “Nothing at first. I was screaming for the police again and again and again. ‘I’m down here!’ And then, I started bashing against the roof and everything to get your attention. But with all that talking up there, no one could hear it.”

“Did he get mad at you for that?” “Uh huh. And that’s what made him put the chain around my neck.”

“So after you made the tape, what happened?” “I made the tape and he said he’d be back at around seven. Then he said he went to a pay phone, called up Aunt Linda, put the tape on her
answering machine…which I thought was a pretty dumb idea, because they could trace the call! Plus he said he wanted a little daughter or son.”

“He did?” “Uh huh.” “All of a sudden he wants a little daughter or son? And what did you say to that?”

“I said, so why don’t you adopt one? And he said ?cuz they won’t let me. And I said like why? And he said ?cuz what happened in the past.”

Katie was humming again now.
“So did he come back and say ‘Oh I went to a pay phone.’? Why did you think he gave you an explanation about the pay phone?”

“So I wouldn’t be scared—but unfortunately I was. I know you guys got reports that I was in Hyde Park.”

“Someone thought they saw you there last night. Not so, huh?” “Well, how could that be if I’m right here?” “Yeah, right! Some people, when they hear something like this— they get all excited—and call the police. And it’s all over the country too. How do you feel about all the notoriety?”

“Not very good.”

The conversation was long and meandering, and I was wondering what else has been suppressed in Katie’s long-term memory. I was expecting gaps in her adult narrative. People who survive repeated, inescapable childhood sex abuse may lock away their memories in complex amnesias.
³⁷

The tapes seemed to support that theory. In Katie’s extended conversations with me, there were parts missing, liquidated either by time or trauma.

There are long spans of silence between questions. Katie was drawing hearts, while the detective was drawing conclusions.

“Why would they want to make a movie about me?” “Maybe they won’t.” “I hope not! I just want to be a normal kid! I had no childhood!” “You’re only how old? Ten years old? You still have a chance for a childhood.”

“Three more years and then I’m a teenager!” “Watch out—watch out!” “Wait until I get my license. Everyone betta stay off the road!”

“Oh oh! You’ll be a good driver. I’m sure you will. As I was telling you before, a question came up about you sitting on John’s lap driving his truck. Did you ever do that?”

“Once. A long time ago. When I was with my brother.”
Katie told me she felt guilty about John wanting to touch her, so I anticipated and understood her lies.

“So pretty much—the touching stuff only happened while you were down in that room?”

“Uh huh.” “Ok and had he ever before tried to touch your private areas?” “No. When am I going to go home?” “Well, we are going to be chatting with you for a while yet.” “G’nite.”
Katie put her head down on the conference table and closed her aching eyes.

“No no!! Don’t go to sleep on me Katie! Don’t do this to me! How many times did you ask him to let you go—do you think?”

“ABOUT A THOUSAND!!”
Katie raised her voice.
“And what was his excuse? Or did he have different ones?” “He said, ‘Next Monday, next Monday. On Monday, I’m gonna kill myself. I’ll leave a note somewhere where they will find it.’”

The Chief stopped the tape. Katie, he surmised, was avoiding talking about the tough parts. I had a different impression. To me, it seemed the right questions just hadn’t been asked yet, but then I reminded myself that she was a ten-year-old girl and this was a delicate process.

There is silence on the tape for several minutes. Different detectives entered the debriefing room.

“Where were we, Miss?” “I don’t remember.”

She was exhausted, but still had enough steam to continue an upbeat dialogue. The cops now were all chiming in, as Katie demonstrated her grit. She needed no prodding. Eager to share every detail, she plodded on through her exhaustion.

“Whenever I heard him coming, I locked myself.” “Do you know what today is?”
Katie counted on her fingers from December 28 all the way to January 13.

“You missed the whole new year!”

“I got about two hours sleep every night,” Katie yawned. “Why two hours?” “?Cuz I was scared! I was down there,”
she counted aloud,
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty—sixteen days I was down there without seeing the outside except the news!”

“Now,
” said one of the male detectives
, “Debbie just came in and you had mentioned before Big John kissed you.”

Debbie began, “
Where did he kiss you?” “On my lips and on my cheeks,”
Katie answered matter-of-factly.
“Anywhere else—did he kiss anywhere else?” “No.”

Katie drew a diagram of the bunker. She hummed as she scribbled and the cops made small talk.
“When you grow up, you should be a detective!”

More detectives entered the debriefing room. This time it was the Police Commissioner, Peter Cosgrove. The detectives told the Commissioner that Katie was going over stories. She was talking fast, in good spirits.

“Every time he came and visited you, did you ask him when he was gonna let you go?”

“He said he was gonna kill himself and leave a note pinned to himself. He has a note in his safe and he has a tape of the underground, for when he dies. He has a note behind the big screen TV. The last night he said he was gonna hang himself. I said ‘Good, I’m glad!’”

It was as if I were interviewing her twenty years later, but the details were sharper. The voice was juvenile, the accent more Long Island, but the facts were generally the same. I was listening, my ear literally pressed against the recorder speaker, scouring for details she may have left behind long ago. Katie no longer remembered the blood stains, or the threats that John planned to kill himself. And she never told cops about the rapes.

Debbie then pressed her on the sex abuse, asking how long he would kiss her.

“Four, five minutes,”
Katie estimated.
“He would just kiss you. He didn’t do anything else?” “Nope.”

“What did he say?” “He said that he liked me, that I was pretty.” “That’s all he said?” “He said he was gonna leave me five thousand dollars.” “How’d you like that?” “I liked that!” “He was gonna give you five thousand dollars and he gave you five hundred?”

“I’m gonna buy presents for my family—that’s all I do with all my money…”

Katie paused and touched her shirt.
“This is all wet. Because I had it behind the pillow and the walls started to get wet. Because I was underground. My shirt is filthy.”

“You want to have a lady-to-lady conversation here?”
I assumed the men in the room, at this point, exited.

“I just thought, maybe you’d want to talk to me. I was asking you before, when John would come down, once a day to give you food, how did you go to the bathroom?”
Debbie asked.

Katie described the toilet set-up but then said eventually she couldn’t wait for John’s once a day appearance.

“I decided the heck with it, and I went under the TV.”
Ultimately, the conversation veered into the place detectives needed details most
.

“We have to be sure,”
said Debbie,
“did he ever touch you anywhere in your private places?”

There was no audible answer. Katie must have nodded.
“He did? Where ,when? Do you remember what day?”

With the same melodic kick in her voice, she then mapped out a calendar of molestation.

“I know it wasn’t yesterday...um…last Thursday, last Friday, last Sunday—the first night I was there and the first day...”

“And what would he do?” “In my privates—in both places.” “What are your names for those places?” “My vagina and my butt.” “What would he say while he did this?” “Nothin.”

“No? What would be his reason?”

“I dunno. He asked me if I had to go to the bathroom and the next thing I knew he was rubbing me.”

“With what?”

“With his hand.”

“What did he say while rubbing you?”

“Nothin.”

“What did you say?”

“I said stop. He said no.”

“How long would he rub you for?”

“About two minutes.”

“Did he ever make you touch him?”

“No.”

“How did you feel?”

“I didn’t like it.”

“So he did this a lot?’

Katie changed the subject.

“You’re pretty smart, you know.”

“Hey, I’m a street wise kid.”

#8220;You certainly are!”

“Living in Mastic, you have to be like that.”

“You’re a pip. A street wise kid that’s cute to boot!”

“Is he going to jail?”

Dominick came in to check on me occasionally—he could hear Katie’s animated little voice. Then I hit pause.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“I think she sounds chipper.”

“Exactly,” he said. “What does that tell you? We always knew,” he said, answering his own question, “from her demeanor, from her spirit, she’d be okay. She’d be okay.”

I then asked the Chief if I could listen to the captivity tapes as he had, alone. With a long gaze deep into my eyes and a clear understanding of my motives, he agreed.

The black outdated recorder was easy enough to pilot.

“You didn’t realize everybody loved you so much—right?”
John’s voice on the tape startled me.

“I knnnnoooow.”
Katie’s word was almost sung, with a whine, in several long sorrow-filled syllables.
“That’s why I want to go baaack.”
Then, a deep slow cry of a child in misery.

“
You’re looking at TV all the time. Are you sleeping a little bit?”
John’s voice was not at all what I had expected. There was no Hannibal Lecter, no madman erupting into psychotic rants. He spoke with the sing-song cadence of a kindergarten teacher and as if Katie were his favorite pupil. But his gentle inflection did nothing to soothe his astute captive.

“No!”
she answered emphatically.

“I’m up all night!”

The tape, forty minutes long on one side and twenty minutes on the other, was, in places, impossible to decipher. The voices remained muffled, even after being enhanced with an equalizer. At times, there was clarity when Katie and John must have been positioned next to the recorder.

“It gets a little hot in there, right?”

“Not really. I like it warm; I’m under a blanket twenty-four hours a day.”
She wasn’t crying now. It sounded as if she were plotting.

“You like it?”
He took the bait.
“Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some warm water...
” She ignored the comment.

The tape was voice activated, so there were no gaps. Any pauses in conversation were eliminated and days were strung together with almost imperceptible audio stops and starts. It was impossible to ascertain when one day began and another one ended.

“I’m gonna go. I gotta go,”
he said breathlessly.

“No don’t go,”
Katie cried.

“I gotta clean this place up, too, one of these days.”

“
Gooood night,”
she said, sounding resigned to the loneliness and isolation she knew followed his departure.

“Ohhh noooo… I missed my birthday.”
It was a heart wrenching lament followed by loud unrelenting sobs
.
December 30, 1992 was Katie’s tenth birthday.

“I missed my birthday….. Oh I missed my birthday…I’m ten years ooooolllllddd,”
she cried over and over again, to herself, in the underground prison.

Later, I could hear banging, a hammer, and then latches opening. Next, drilling.

More banging.

Then, crying,
“I wanna be home!”
Screaming, weeping. It was not clear if she were alone or if John were present. There was simply loud unrelenting weeping. It was eardrum shattering crying, like an inconsolable baby.

John’s demeanor changed after the next spate of drilling. He was out of breath and Katie asked
, “What do you waaant?”

“Nothin’ Katie,”
breathlessly he added, “
Something’s gonna happen soon.”

Alarmed she asked
, “Is anything gonna happen to you?”
Katie obviously realized without John to lead police to her, she was dead.

“Maybe, but I just want you to know you’ll be alright.”

“No!”
she screamed.
“Don’t worry about it, Katie; nothin’s gonna happen to you. I promise. I gotta go. Alright?”